Responsible party: liux0756, Dagny

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Main class wiki page: home

Please try to include the following

• main points understood, and expand them - what is your understanding of what the points were.
  • expand these points by including many of the details the class discussed.
• main points which are not clear. - describe what you have understood and what the remain questions surrounding the point(s).
  • Other classmates can step in and clarify the points, and expand them.
• How the main points fit with the big picture of QM. Or what is not clear about how today's points fit in in a big picture.
• wonderful tricks which were used in the lecture.
  

Today we focus on the following two points.

• rest of Legendre polynomial
• Radial part of Schrodinger equation

In the last class the power series method is used:

<math>U(\xi)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty a_n \xi^2</math>

Substitute it into differential equation derives the recursive relation:

<math>a_k=\frac{(\nu+1)(\nu+2)…(\nu+k)(-\nu)(-\nu+1)…(-\nu+k-1)}{(k!)^2} a_0</math>

<math>a_0</math> is determined by normalization.

Now consider the convergence requirement. Just as the simple harmonic oscillator, for normalizable solutions the power series must terminate. And if <math>\nu</math> is an integer, <math>a_k</math> will be zero if k is large enough. If <math>\nu</math> is negative, there exists a corresponding positive <math>\nu</math> that leads to the same recursive relation. So <math>\nu</math> can be limited to non-negative numbers:

<math>\nu=0,1,2,…</math>

<math>\alpha=\nu(\nu+1)=0,2,6,12,…</math>

Generally <math>P_\nu (z) </math> is called Legendre function, <math>\nu</math> is any real number. If convergence is important, <math>\nu=l</math> is integer, we deal with the Legendre polynomial <math>P_l (z) </math>

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